QuickTime

QuickTime is a multimedia framework and media player developed by Apple Inc. It provides APIs and components for handling digital video, audio, and interactive media, supporting playback, streaming, editing, and authoring workflows. QuickTime has been integrated into macOS and, historically, also released for Windows.

The QuickTime File Format (.mov, historically .qt) is a container format used by QuickTime to store multiple data tracks—video, audio, subtitles, and effects—within a single file. It supports a range of codecs and is widely used in professional video workflows, although modern Apple workflows increasingly rely on AVFoundation and other container formats.

History: QuickTime was introduced in 1991 as part of Apple's multimedia strategy. It evolved through several major versions, with QuickTime Player providing built-in playback. In macOS development, newer APIs such as AVFoundation superseded older QuickTime APIs (including QTKit). A Windows version remained available into the 2010s and was discontinued in 2016 due to security concerns.

Today, QuickTime remains part of macOS as a media player and historical framework, while developers are encouraged to use AVFoundation for new applications. The .mov container continues to be used for storing video and audio data across platforms, though many modern workflows use alternative containers and codecs.